To: j g cordes who wrote (15895 ) 1/20/1998 2:05:00 AM From: epicure Read Replies (2) | Respond to
I am a biologist. I think like a biologist. I look at the animal kingdom for my clues to human behavior. We have glossed over many of our animal insticts but they are still there. Women, in general (and I allow for exceptions) want to secure resources for their offspring. They want to nurture those offspring, and care for them in a way I would argue that is different from the way a male might view his offspring. Now I grant you, human society has imposed an artificial framework on human males and females, which has distorted their more animal impulses. For instance the urge male animals have to mate copiuosly, to ensure a large pool of offspring. And the urge in females, in opposition to the male, to secure as much of a males attention as possible to ensure resources for her and her offspring. Females have a very limited abillity to produce offspring when compared to males. Now I feel that many of our social conventions, and conventions in other cultures are aimed at "domesticating" males to provide a safer environment in which to develop families, which, I think is probably in both sexes interest, and is selected for genetically. The evolution of complex cultures goes back in the human species probably no more than 50 thousand years. But we have apelike hominids for 2 million years. I would argue that the "coarse" nature of those hominids, is stronger than the "veneer" of culture that has been overlaid in the last 50 thousand years. So we are really talking about totally different things, you and I. I am merely arguing about humans in an abstract sense as regards their sexual/social tendencies whereas you are discussing, I think, modern concepts of relationships, at an individual level. I wasn't discussing that at all, but rather agreeing with Alex that at a deep psychological level many people in our culture probably see a rich or intelligent man (because homo sapiens capital is his intellect), regardless of other factors, as an alpha male.
